


Hundred

by sheafrotherdon



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-18 07:53:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14848730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: After Infinity War; Bucky finds Steve.





	Hundred

When they undo everything, bring everyone home, reset time so that no one remembers the losses but the handful of them who wielded the stone, Steve melts away from the new ending they’ve made before he can see Bucky or Sam or T’Challa again. He’s seen things, felt things that he can’t just erase – needs time to let the wound scab over before he can let himself feel anything else; joy, perhaps; the relief he’s holding at bay. He picks his way back toward New York using every hustle and skill he has, works out most of what’s dogging him in his dreams each night, revisiting the horror of Thanos’ victory and the long moments before any of them could think of what came next. He doesn’t want to be found and no one finds him. Until he’s back at his apartment and Bucky’s standing across the room from him, watching him closely as he shuts the door.

“How long have you been here?” Steve asks.

Bucky shrugs. “Just today.”

“So you knew then.”

“Known where you’ve been the whole time.”

Steve lets out a long breath and sets his backpack on the floor. “Then why did you wait until now?”

“Seemed like you had something you needed to work out.”

Steve huffs a pained laugh, looking away. “Something like that.”

“Thor told us.”

Steve looks back at Bucky. 

“About what happened. In that timeline. Before you all fixed it.”

Steve sets his jaw, nods.

“Stevie . . .”

“Don’t.”

“You’re an idiot.” Bucky starts to cross the room.

“Am I?” 

“100% the most mule-headed son-of-a-bitch I’ve ever met.”

Bucky’s close and Steve stares at the neckline of his t-shirt. “Takes one . . .”

“. . . to know one. Real good comeback there.” And Bucky reaches out and pulls him close. Steve goes willingly.

“I saw you die,” Steve says as calmly as he can, arms around Bucky’s back, face half-buried in his shoulder.

“Yeah, bud. I know,” Bucky says quietly, and cups the back of Steve’s head with one hand. “I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t – ”

“I’m sorry,” Buck says again, and Steve closes his eyes, swallows hard.

“Yeah.”

“Can’t promise I won’t do it again,” Bucky murmurs.

“Can’t promise either.”

Bucky pulls away just a little, and Steve grits his teeth against it. “You want to talk?”

Steve shakes his head. He wants is to crawl into bed, tug Bucky down with him and lie there until the sheer fact that Bucky’s alive takes root.

“You haven’t slept.”

“Have you?”

A corner of Bucky’s mouth twitches. “Some.”

“Liar.”

Bucky nods. “Did you eat?”

“Some.”

“Touché,” Bucky says, and he wraps his fingers around Steve’s wrist, tugs him toward the door. “We’re going to the deli, we’re eating enough food to sink a ship, I will knock you out myself and drag you to bed if I have to . . .”

“Wouldn’t have to drag me,” Steve says, and he feels his ears pinking but he meets Bucky’s gaze with an honesty he knows is written all over his face.

Bucky’s expression softens, and he leans in to press a kiss to Steve’s forehead. “This is what it takes, huh? I gotta die, you gotta take off so you don’t bleed all over anyone . . .”

“Buck – ”

“Shhhhhh,” Bucky says, and this time he kisses Steve on the mouth, just long enough for Steve heart’s to jump and squeeze out two beats where there should’ve been one. Bucky’s mouth is chapped, rough.

Steve sways into Bucky’s touch and then pulls away a fraction, tries to rally. “Call that a kiss?”

“Fucker.”

“First since 1945?”

Bucky cracks a grin and leans in again, and Steve meets him more than half way, kisses back with all the pent-up emotion he can’t seem to shake, only realizes when Bucky pulls back that he’s fisted his hands in the front of Bucky’s shirt. He pulls in a breath that’s ragged, uneven.

“I got an idea,” Buck says, and Steve’s pleased to hear his voice falter.

“Yeah?” Steve smoothes down Bucky’s shirt.

“Yeah. Fuck the deli,” Bucky says.

Steve licks his lip, watches Bucky’s gaze dip then rise again. “You sure? They do a mean pastrami at the – ”

“So help me,” Bucky growls.

Steve smiles, takes a couple of steps and turns around when Bucky doesn’t follow. “You with me?”

And Bucky looks at him with a fondness that makes Steve’s thinking slow and strange.

“I’m with you,” Bucky says, and Steve feels the force of it, the sudden certain knowledge this was always going to be where they ended up, the end of a hundred-year line.


End file.
